Gaddafi likely wounded and not in Tripoli -Italy

LA BAGNAIA, Italy,  (Reuters) – Libyan leader Muammar  Gaddafi has likely been wounded in western airstrikes and has  probably left Tripoli, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini  said today.
A Libyan government spokesman immediately denied that  Gaddafi had been harmed.
Frattini told reporters that he believed what he had been  told by Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Catholic bishop in  Tripoli, that Gaddafi had probably left Tripoli and had probably  even been wounded by NATO airstrikes.
“I tend to give credence to the comment of the bishop of  Tripoli, Monsignor Martinelli, who has been in close contact  over recent weeks, when he told us that Gaddafi is very probably  outside Tripoli and is probably also wounded. We don’t know  where or how,” Frattini said.
“It’s nonsense,” Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim  said in Tripoli. “The leader is in high morale. He’s in good  spirits. He is leading the country day by day. He hasn’t been  harmed at all.”
Asked about the Libyan denial, Frattini said he still  believed what Martinelli said.
In a separate interview published on the website of the  Corriere della Sera, Frattini also said that he did not believe  that Libyan TV footage of Gaddafi greeting tribal leaders on  Wednesday was authentic.
“I strongly doubted that those images were taken on that day  and above all in Tripoli,” Frattini said.
“There are people on the ground who have the pulse of the  situation … Among many others I am referring to Bishop  Martinelli, who has had, and still has, close relations with the  regime,” he said.
He added: “The international pressure has likely led Gaddafi  to decide to seek shelter in a safe location. I tend to think  that he fled Tripoli, not Libya.”
An official at the NATO operations centre in Naples repeated  NATO’s line that it was not targeting individuals in bombing  raids that have hit Libyan capital and said the alliance had no  way to confirm Frattini’s comments.
“We can’t verify that as we don’t have any way of tracking  his movements,” the official said. “We don’t have boots on the  ground.”   Contacted from Rome, Martinelli’s office said the bishop had  left Tripoli for Tunis. The bishop himself was not reachable.
As the Vatican’s top official in Tripoli, Martinelli has  been in contact with Gaddafi’s entourage.
The Italian prelate joined a Muslim cleric in blessing the  bodies of Gaddafi’s youngest son and three grandchildren who  were killed in a NATO air raid on April 30.
Since the start of the NATO operation, Martinelli has been  highly outspoken and critical of the military strikes, saying  that many civilians had been killed.